


trouble on my left, trouble on my right, i've been facing trouble all my life

by sun_dog



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Fix It Fic, M/M, anyway there's nothing better than roadtrips son, au they went on that roadtrip, cw is for cweerbait, dont watch this show, queerplatonic, they and beronica have the most chemistry bye, u dont erase jughead's sexuality and brozone him and archie without me writing a fix it fic, warning for mention for archie and grundy but its only for healing purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_dog/pseuds/sun_dog
Summary: au: they went on that roadtripThe road is poured gold, a snapping serpent tongue, a riotous stroke of lightning, the sharp lick of an electric Fender burning through the brain. They are driving to nowhere, to the wide open places, to the mythical edge of the American sky where they can whip rocks into the sun, crack open the summer’s edge and touch toes with the skirts of the ocean.





	

_au: they did go on that roadtrip_

* * *

The road is poured gold, a snapping serpent tongue, a riotous stroke of lightning, the sharp lick of an electric Fender burning through the brain. They are driving to nowhere, to the wide open places, to the mythical edge of the American sky where they can whip rocks into the sun, crack open the summer’s edge and touch toes with the skirts of the ocean.

_You get a wish there,_ Jug had said. His eyes were slim and smiling and conspiratorial. _Like upon a star, a rainbow, a pot of gold— a wishing well. I don’t make the rules, Archie. I just follow the archetypes._

Archie had smiled, huffed, brows strung together like by a tiny thread. Archie with his taught form, hard to move, like he was stuffed with cotton but lacked joints. _You don’t make the rules?_ _That’s news to me._

Jughead had smiled.

That encouraged Archie, lit him up inside the lights strung across his ribs. He felt like Vegas, playing fetch. The way he wanted to bring that smile back to Jughead every time he tossed it out. _Who told you you get a wish?_

_I dreamed it,_ Jughead had answered, leaning back on the couch in the student lounge. _But it’s only one so you better make it something good._ He looked up at his phone, squinted with a hand over his forehead to block the light.

The road brings Archie back to himself.

Bright signs in highway green assure him they fly further into the unknown. Archie grips the steering wheel, he is Lucky Lindy across the Atlantic. The clouds tumble through the piercing blue like he drives the helm of a tornado. He can feel his hair spread follicle by follicle in the wind. It cleaves his tight chest open like a jack.

Jughead is a shadow, back flat on the hot seat like he’s melted paper thin.

His chin is thrown into the air, hair wild like ocotillos, dark knives that bloom into beautiful flowers. The wiry line of his leg stretches out the window, rests on the mirror. His filthy shoelaces pitch in the wind like streamers. He is smiling like he is drunk, eyes shut, moving his fingers against his knees to the messy music pouring into the air. Archie can hear him breathing, like he is taking the kind of deep breaths you only take after running for a long time.

Archie likes this, he likes seeing the stray threads of Jughead’s seams undulate from his depths like worms after new rain. They are both young and they have so much growing to do. They are new dirt and iron and promise. Archie plants roses in Jughead when he isn’t looking. When he is asleep, or in moments like this. One day there will be no more empty spaces, petals will curl around his bones. And if you pull on Jughead’s threads you won’t have to be afraid he’ll disappear.

The trees are huge green tennis rackets, singing in the breeze, smashing the wind back and forth between one another. Archie’s eyes are bright, hair scorching at his temples, lava through his fault lines—the perfect boy, with all his puppet strings, wood cracking like it does with age. How much longer won’t he notice the way his limbs move without his consent? How much longer until he sees he can’t close his eyes at night because someone else is keeping them open?

Jughead is looking at him. Jughead’s lips are scissors.

That’s why they are friends.

It’s the strings that keep Jughead together, and the strings that hold Archie apart.

Kissing teaches them how to be whole— that’s what they are doing, isn’t it? Kissing through the music, through the rushing pivots of the wind, like being pinned on a clothesline. Through the greasy fast food wrappers tossed in piles on the floor – their oath, _share everything, especially french fries_. The contraband beer in the back and the bottle of whiskey Jughead pilfered from his father. They kiss all the time. The kiss through moments, through eyes, through hopeful looks and half eaten ice cream sundaes never wasted because they’re always split between two. Jughead says people don't really know how to kiss at all. Kissing isn't one set of lips on another. 

The wheels hurl them down the highway, molten black against searing tar, the gasoline— Riverdale is a memory.

It’s the kind of feeling when you get away with something.

-

They did commit a crime.

Knees up, shoes in the parched dirt, shoulders touching, they admit they killed something. Maybe it’s the swallowing maw of the canyon, that way a whistle echoes to its depths like a stomach growls when it’s hungry. Maybe it’s the jagged tooth-like smile of the mountains that reminds them of all the blood.

Archie rubs a hand across his face. He leaves red fingerprints from the dirt. Jughead’s thin lips are tight on a cigarette. He’s not even really smoking it. Archie is the fire, see, burning, _burning,_ and Jughead is the smoke. It’s Archie’s fault his burning, and Jughead’s fault he’s lit. Before and after, cause and effect. Archie grips Jughead’s hand, holds his hand, suddenly.

“I never wanna go back home,” Archie says, squinting in the sun. It is nearly the 4th of July, see, freedom, blueberries, clean water, and the long boom of bombs in the sky. Celebrating with destruction. Building up by tearing down. Bells and tassels for the heroes, gates open and honey seeping from the trees. Grill grease and broken beer bottles in the sand.

“You don’t have to,” assures Jughead, looking down at their hands. “I’ll stay in dreamland with you,” it’s not hopeful the way he says it. It’s longing. It's weird in his throat.

Archie huffs again, always so disbelieving of anything gold. That’s what happens when you are made of it, you realize gold only glimmers in the light. Any other time it looks as plain as any rock. It’s a trick of the eye. Only worth something because everyone seems to believe it.

He looks over to Jughead, who is jagged lines and sinewy limbs. He is all the pieces no one wanted, put together like broken glass to make a new boy. Jughead is a real person. Looking at Jughead fills him with relief. Knowing they are together, that they sat down together, that they are willfully together, fills Archie with relief.

Archie scrapes sometimes at his own edges, when no one is looking, the shiny edges everyone wants to touch. He’s not sure what they would do if they knew it was paint that makes him gleam, that yellow gold and earnest blue, and that underneath is plastic.

Jughead’s fingers are interlaced in his own, he hasn’t pulled them away.

“You are so… cool. So _beautiful_ ,” Archie says, laughs, the words are carried away from him, from a place inside that is getting older, that is stretching beyond his cracking voice and new elastic muscles. He doesn’t feel embarrassed about it.

Jughead stares out into the distance. The cigarette bleeds smoke into the empty air like zero-gravity plasma. This is a sacred place. The great wide pages of Americana. Where you can say or be anything. The moments between moments. The magic of the land where you can be free in the hollows between times and places.

“Beauty fades, Arch. It’s just a concept and I’d swap it to get rid of tiredness,” he answers. “I’m tired of everything.” They are both quiet for a minute. Jughead sighs so deeply the pebbles quiver. “Tiredness sticks like glue. Glue freezes you in place even when you want to run. Even the cheap... dollar store stuff. The stuff that shouldn't work. It slows you down.”

Archie stills and watches him.

Soon Jughead begins to unravel, as if he couldn’t have helped it even if he tried. Like this was all in the post, like Jughead packed it up and took it with him to kill it in the blankness of the desert, to bury it with the only person he trusts in the world. Archie has a shovel, right? Archie will dig a hole. If Archie needed to, Archie would find a gun.

Jughead begins to list off things, eyes gleaming like glass against the bare canyon rock and sharp mint sky. The heat makes his hair sink, sweat gathers at his temples. He explains everything like he really is explaining it, like he’s trying to give a reason for it all, not just describe it out loud. He says things like drinking, dad,  lost, _homeless._

Jughead is bent over his knees, palms pushed into his eyes. The desert heaves, asking for his tears. Parched.

“Is this what it’s all about, Archie?” his throat is tight, tracks of salt tears splitting the dust on his face. “Getting away from it all? Getting _away_ with it all? I just… I don’t know how to feel?” he shrugs helplessly, voice clawed together and pained. His breathing hitches and he wipes his eyes. Jughead is so honest, the rocks around them drink honesty up with desperation.

“You’re scared,” Archie says, and Jughead’s raw eyes meet his instantly. “You’re scared. But you aren’t alone. You’re never alone. That’s not what it’s all about, Jughead. It’s not. I’ll even be scared with you, okay? That doesn’t mean we won’t figure this out.”

Archie scrambles for the words to tape together this gaping thing, Jughead’s wound that pours into the sand around them. Instead he decides to let it bleed out. Let it go dry. He wants to suck it out like a snake venom, rancid as it is. It turns the dirt black, evaporates, never seems to stop flowing.

“You’re going to live with me,” says Archie.

“Right. In dreamland?” Jughead says dismissively, voice caught.

“Well, it’s not on the map,” Archie gestures towards the truck. “But I’m willing if you are.”

Jug huffs softly, looking back over to him. “You’re serious?

“Dude, yes. Are you kidding?”

Jughead looks at him, looks him from for a little while before giving a little, trying to claw himself back to his senses. “Of course you’re serious, what was I thinking. You’ve literally never had a sense of humor, Archie. I’ve always liked that about you.”

Archie is smiling from the corner of his mouth. His dark brows and strong jaw make him look older than his is, there are promises in his bones, in his lips.

“I feel pathetic about all of this.”

“Don’t ever say that again.”

Jughead looks over. Archie’s expression is hard, almost angry. His voice tense.

“I swear to god don’t ever say that again, Jughead.”

Jughead’s dark brows slide together. The severity in Archie’s tone actually makes him feel better. His shoulders lose their tightness as he jokes.  “What? What _are_ you gonna do? Go to the principal and make me apologize to myself?”

Archie stares at him for a second, getting the shift in tone. He shrugs. “I’ll kidnap and tie up everyone in Riverdale and you can pick whatever house you want.”

Jughead actually laughs.

“Creep.”

Archie nods.

“You can have two houses, hell you can have all of them. I’ll roll everyone off into the Sweetwater with concrete shoes and we’ll watch movies all day at the Twilight. Cannonballs in the Blossom’s pool, coup at Pop’s, you can take over the Bugle. I’ll be Mayor. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jughead repeats. “Savage, Arch.”

“Thank you,” Archie says, pleased. “See? Character development. I’m becoming more than Mr Popular Football God right before your very eyes.”

Jughead smiles at the pandering. “You’re being fleshed out. No longer the tropey vanilla hometown cutout, the audience begins to understand the somewhat alarming, felonious, lengths you’d go to ensure the security of your motivations, even at great moral and personal risk, and your deep, endearing devotion to your one and true—“

Archie kisses him.

“Best friend?” Jughead says, grinning wildly, after the kiss breaks.

“Try again?”

“Gal pal?”

Archie laughs, hand still holding Jughead’s face.

“No!”

Jughead nods knowingly, drags. “I get it, I get it. A coupla guys bein dudes.”

Archie tilts his head, exhausted. “Stop.”

Standing up he reaches for Jughead’s hand.

Jughead opens the car door, “A platonic relationship—“

“No! — Wait,” Archie looks up hopefully from his side of the car.

Jughead grins.

-

Archie is asleep in the patchy lawn chair, red hair inflamed into a startling yellow by the fire that burns between them, pushing back the wild dark on all sides.

Jughead is tired, bones empty from his recent admission. But there is a difference between hollowness and emptiness, and that is something he just learned today.

Emptiness can mean a place for something else, hollowness is a thing with a life of its own.

Jughead pokes at the fire, watching the embers frantically rise like bees.

His eyes fall on Archie, with his bold new muscles and his strong, unfamiliar jaw. He narrows his eyes, looking for the boy he’s known since childhood. He finds him in the sleepy crunch of his eyes, the arms curled around his body for warmth, the breath leaving his chest and causing the stray hair by his nose to flutter. It's in the scar on his brows from one particularly nasty fall from their treehouse. He finds him in the way Archie’s phone lights up—a message from his father, but the picture in the background is Jughead himself and Archie, nerf guns in hand, battle-worn.

Archie is something Jughead could never be, but Archie is still here— with Jughead. Things have changed, but summer provides a strange clarity, a sort of eternal pause, a slow butterfly-like existential realization. The flap of wings and pollen and seconds. Archie is here. The world has shifted, that is true. But Archie has stepped as it turned around them, to make sure his place remained beside Jughead.

Jughead stands up, walks over to the other boy, shoes crunching in the dirt. He knocks aside the empty beer cans with his foot. He pulls a blanket tight around Archie’s shoulder’s, moves his hair from his face with a gentleness that is belied by his habitual shell of discerning sourness.

Archie blinks his eyes open groggily, “Hey,” he says, smile halfway to forming.

“Hey,” whispers Jughead.

Archie suddenly straightens up, “What’s up, is everything okay? Are you okay?”

“I’m cool,” Jughead says like an order. “Sleep, okay? Mute your hero impulse you need your eight hours.”

Archie settles down unwillingly at the press of Jughead’s hand.

Jughead settles into the chair next to him, pulling the blanket up to his chin.

“Juggie,” says Archie, his soft voice breaking the nighttime quiet and the soft lull of crickets.

“Yeah,” answers Jughead sleepily.

“Do you think there are bears out here?”

Jughead’s brows fly together, annoyed. “Probs, Archie. Jesus.”

“What?”

“That’s like asking someone who is about to sleep on a rowboat off Martha’s Vineyard if you think there are sharks out here.”

“What… oh.”

“Yeah.”

Archie laughs. He waits another few minutes before ominously humming the _Jaws_ theme into the dark.

-

They are one day from the ocean and parked, eating Kahuna Burger on the outskirts of a dusty Nevada town. The translocated palm trees dryly suck up dust from the air at the edges of the pavement.

Jughead is mid-chew when Archie looks so painfully immersed in thought it alarms him. “Dude, you’re scaring me. What is it?”

“What is what?” Archie asks, eyes achingly innocent. He’s holding his burger in front of him and they are watching the ins and outs of the nearest Megamall from a safe distance in the mostly-empty parking lot.

“You are thinking so hard it’s _hurting_ me. Now spill,” Jughead demands, taking a long, loud sip of his soda. His hair is wild around his ears. It’s 10 in the morning.

“I’m not thinking,” Archie defends lamely.

Jughead’s expression drains so hard it looks like he invented the expression of disbelief.

Archie rolls his eyes, unable to escape.

“Okay, fine,” he answers.

Jughead waits several minutes, the radio between them quietly spasming about some magnificent car dealership. “ _'Okay, fine'_ ?" he quotes. “That’s all I’m getting out of you?”

“Okay, look,” Archie amends quickly, taking a deep breath, and Jughead leans back for the inevitable word vomit. “I— I— kissed,” Archie is nervous.

Jughead’s brows are up, sipping his soda, nonjudgmental.

Archie exhales. “I kissed Miss Grundy— but I don’t know,” he fumbles.

Jughead’s brows immediately sink in surprise. “What? _Miss Grundy?_ From school?”

Archie’s eyes fly to his, trying to explain. “She— drove me home from work, at my dad’s. She was in her car, and you know, I thought it was kind of weird but whatever. I was tired. It’s like twelve hours of concrete and bricks and I wasn’t going to pass up a ride. So she offered to get me lunch, and I was like okay sure. You know? You know how I think with my stomach. And yeah, it was a little unexpected but Coach grabs us lunch all the time and that’s totally chill, you know? So the next day, I see her in the neighborhood again. She offered me a ride and I said sure. But on the way home she leaned over and her hand was on my leg, dude, and I was so surprised I didn’t even say anything before she—“

“Arch,” Jughead reaches for his hand, a smooth calming thumb on the back of Archie’s wrist slows down the nervous, confused admission. “Archie that isn’t your fault,” Jughead says. “What she did—that’s not _cool_ , okay. That wasn’t on you.”

Archie’s mouth is pressed tight, but he looks up at Jughead’s amnesty. “I didn’t mind actually, I thought it was kind of fun when it happened. But the more I think about it the more confused I get.”

Jughead’s concern is written all over his face, eyes trained on Archie.

“You can tell someone about this—“

“No,” Archie says firmly. “No. I—I did tell someone. I told you, okay?”

Jughead nods, assuring. He knows when the time to push is, and it isn’t now. 

“I’m not— mad at you,” Jughead says, slowly putting it all together. “You know that right? What we have, this isn’t effected by that. That. That is something else, Arch. That’s something that happened to you—not something you did.”

Archie exhales, messy red hair falling into his eyes like it sunk in relief.

He nods a little, finally getting the clarity to look back to his sandwich—a cue with allows Jughead to do the same.

“She wanted me to go down to the river with her on the 4th of July,” Archie says.

“Love you more than those bitches before, Arch,” asserts Jughead superiorly, stuffing his face at that exact moment with a palm-full of fries.

Archie laughs.

“Yeah, okay now I have to listen to that song,” Archie replies, fooling with his iTunes while Jughead steals the rest of his soda.

-

They make it to the beach on the 4th.

Archie is glowing, beating with summer, like the sun decided to live inside him, to rent out his ribs. Jughead looks at him, his low swim trunks and hard lines of muscle, the way he throws his head back when his laughs and the bright sparkle to his eye. He looks like a child does in happiness. The waves glimmer like confetti down from the parking lot.

“Come on!” Archie says, leaping out of the trunk, barefoot.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” says Jughead, bones and pale skin, but the summer is kind to him too. Warms his edges like amber, colors his face with soft orange, bleaches the top of his hair a tawny brown.

Archie grabs his arm, dragging the beach stuff behind him with the other. He drops it all in a place on the sand, their own claimed turf surrounded so many others in their summer bubbles. He runs as fast as he can.

Jughead laughs. “I’m not running after y— Archie!”

“Come on, Juggie, everyone likes to be chased,” Archie grins rakishly, pulling his shirt over his head, and Jughead scowls good-naturedly.

“You know you are getting annoyingly good at charming,” Jughead snips.

Archie laughs brightly. It seems to bound across the sand like a beach ball. The beach is scorchingly hot, perfect, the hues saturated. Bright, unrealistic colors pinwheel umbrellas, sandy towels, and women in pretty, eye-catching patterns. Jughead dodges past happy iPhone speakers and older people immersed in their Nooks. Archie runs around little kids making sandcastles and sweet sun-screen scented pockets of air.

When Jughead finally reaches the water he is breathless. Archie is waiting for him. For a second all Jughead sees is Archie. He forgets the water and the waves, the never-ending ribbons of blue, the streaming primary-colored kites dancing over the strong ocean breeze. The burning smell of grill-fire and pop of cans. The cherry lips and cold Coca-cola smiles.

Jughead thinks of never-ending summer and his thinks of Archie.

Archie swings his arm around Jughead, pivots them to look at the sea.

“We made it, man.”

Jughead smiles without saying anything.

“What are you gonna wish for?”

-

Going home is different.

Jughead feels tight, like his clothes have wrapped around his body in coils like snakeskin. Like he is ready to shed, like something is dying within or without him, an exoskin he needs to pull out from. He tugs at the collar of his jacket.

He looks to Archie for relief, but Archie’s jaw is stone. His brows look dark as rain clouds gather further ahead on the highway, and the long empty basin of the Midwest growls with summertime thunder. Archie’s red hair is a dour brown under the grey sky. Jughead thinks it looks like someone snuffed out everything beautiful in him, like throwing dust on a fire. Like erasing everything inside and leaving his shell.

Jughead’s legs are up on the dash. He has a blanket pulled around him. The window is cracked open. The rainstorm air is heavy, impregnated with suspense. It fills the car with the scent of petrichor.

“Was it okay to kiss you like that?” Archie says out of nowhere. “Like I did that day in the canyon?”

Jughead’s brows go up, his eyes move from the road to Archie. “I didn’t come out to you over Facebook Messenger in 8th grade for you to forget I said ‘kissing is okay’, Archie.”

“I’m just double-checking,” Archie assures.

Jughead smiles a little. “Thanks.”

“So just kissing?” he taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

“What, do you have some weird clown make-up fetish I should know about?”

“What?” Archie says, incredulously. “No. Obviously.”

“Am I ever gonna be enough for you, Arch?” Jughead jokes. “You like girls _too?_ Are you gonna dream about _girls_ when you’re with me? You _people_ can’t make up your mind.”

Archie smiles a little.

“I don’t know if it’s just kissing, I’m not a special edition Aroace Magic Eight Ball. Yet,” he says pointedly. “I’m still— figuring it all out. We can… figure us out together,” Jughead says, more hopefully than he planned.

“Okay but if I cross any lines—“

“—I will stab you with the Flame of the West and avenge my honor.”

“Right, exactly,” Archie nods. “Was that… a Lord of the Rings reference? Dude. How old are those movies? How did _I_ recognize that? I legit worry about us sometimes.”

Jughead bursts into laughter with him as the sky thunders angrily above them, and the car speeds closer to the dark point in the horizon.

There is a knock in the trunk, maybe the sound of stray tire rubber on the road, but it causes them to look at one another and lose their mirth.

They forgot about the bodies in the back.

-

When Jughead drives it downpours.

Archie has been sleeping for the past fifty miles.

The windshield wipers flick frantically— they seem to personify anxiety. And Archie turns in his sleep, restlessly.

Jughead feels a chill from the windows. The blurred appearance of the green highway sign takes form as they approach. He squints from the red taillights, and how they give a warped neon glow to the word _Riverdale._

-

By the time they arrive back, the rain has stopped, dispersed into an almost uncannily clear day.

The sun is perched in the sky as if hung there, each street pristine like it were dusted before their return. The green grass is clipped, a friendly wave from the postman, the American flags flapping on the electrical posts above Main Street. But no cars are out, no kids laughing in the park by the hardware store. Some of the shops are shuttered closed and the road to Sweetwater River is barricaded off. The usual impatient line of cars waiting to park by the river’s edge in the peak of summer is missing.

They don’t notice.

Something is happening inside car too, as they pull into town, down Archie’s street, into the driveway.

A bizarre anxiety neither can put a name to, or speak about. With the windows rolled down, they still hear the birds. The sprinklers stream meticulously. The paper delivery kid tosses the Bugle at the end of each driveway. As they exit the car, they round to the trunk, to face what they did.

The truth of it all, the return to the scene of the crime.

Opening the trunk they stare down at the letters jacket and the grey woolen crown buried and cornered.

Archie reaches for his coat, brushes ojf the dust, and Jughead flips his hat free of stray leaves.

When they turn to face each other, it’s uneasy. Somehow.

The world is bright, and Archie, Jughead thinks, is like a comic strip. Bright yellow, yellow and blue and red. Red – too red, not the warm embers of summer, or the hot end of a cigarette, but fire. Fire that could raze Archie down and eat him up.

Jughead pulls his cap over his head like a compression device, it hugs him, shuttering his expressions like blinds. He seems to turn inward, and Archie thinks, the snug hat stuffs in all the poison he leeched out in the desert. Archie thinks, Jughead is drowning again, and Riverdale has water in its name.

Archie opens his mouth to say something, and Jughead leans off the edge of the car, some kind of gratefulness in his eyes.

“Oh my god,” he says, and Jughead’s eyes grow concerned, uncrossing his arms to reach for the newspaper Archie suddenly bent to pick up.

_Star Athlete Jason Blossom Murdered._

For a second their eyes meet, the sky of Riverdale feeling like a closed globe around them.

In the space of a single heartbeat they get a nameless frightful feeling about what killed him.

-

"Take that off," Jughead says quickly. "You know, just for tonight."

Archie looks at him, and nods.

He slips out of the jacket as Jughead pulls off his hat.

When they turn in, after greeting Archie's father and unpacking, they lock Archie's bedroom door and window against the nightfall. They shove their belongings in the closet, Archie stuffs the door shut over the point of his jacket sleeve.

They're not sure what they are trying to keep out.

But it must be something if it's not in here with them.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the cage the elephant song. i wrote this really quick - hope you liked! i couldnt leave these poor characters to their nasty hetero fate on disappointment aka riverdale xoxo


End file.
